Communication and productivity are interdependent, and in a distributed team, their relationship is abundantly clear. While a cozy, in-person meeting might easily segue into a waffly chat, the nature of distributed collaboration tends to highlight time-wasting more starkly.

Fortunately, using a UX Integration Matrix helps integrate UX and agile by including UX information and requirements right in the product backlog. The economics are different in selling consumer products than when developing software for enterprises—UX matters more for consumer products.

Some gadgets help us be more productive, some are just cool, and some are both. The Sanctuary is a universal charger and USB port for electronic devices (currently compatible with 3,767 devices, or so its product page touts).

As a result, collaboration tools are one of the hottest sectors in software. Below are five important trends in collaboration solutions. Collaboration equals integration. Collaboration means many things to many people. However it is defined, effective collaboration solutions will increasingly combine the elements of project and work planning, file sharing and social task management into one unified whole. Collaboration mobilization.

These tools are ubiquitous in business and government, so I have agreed to write a few articles on how they can be used to improve work productivity. IT has to make us more productive, smarter.”. Office 365 productivity tools from Harold Jarche.

Mostly for internal collaboration, according to an Ipsos study commissioned by Microsoft to survey 9,908 global information workers about how they use social tools to get work done, available at The Worldwide Watercooler. Notice how these stated uses generally align with the collaborative & cooperative competencies I identified in my post on cooperation in the networked workplace. Most people want to be collaborative as well as cooperative in order to do better work. MORE >>

It’s true in business as in life, but employers can tend to describe people as resources, and personality as culture, and make their understanding of productive teams fit within these boundaries. The reality is that truly productive teams tend to be close-knit. Let’s face it: In a productive team, it’s the teamwork — willingness to try to problem-solve together — that often ensures the productivity. People need people. MORE >>

In this post I propose a third task for knowledge managers, helping organizations improve knowledge worker productivity. per year making their productivity vital to the competiveness of both organizations and the country. To discuss knowledge worker productivity, it is necessary to first define knowledge workers and to differentiate how they do their work from other kinds of workers. To be productive knowledge workers have to be responsible for their own work processes. MORE >>

Many disagreed, quoting Steve Jobs’ assertion that file sync is a feature, not a product. Apple had already launched the iCloud product. Now, the issue is whether they ultimately become features, products or companies? Feature, product and company. Drew Houston CEO of Dropbox I believe that the answer for the startups in this space is all three: they will become a feature, product and company. Now, it can build a product around that feature. MORE >>

Collaboration is important to buisness, but it isn''t the only thing. Peter Vander Auwera has an interesting discussion on The Myth of Collaboration , which is an interview transcript. Collaboration is an important part of productivity. The focus of the interview focused on the idea of forcing collaboration to happen, rather than creating an environment in which it can happen. . And it can''t be forced by merely rearranging the deck chairs. MORE >>